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One hardly expects to
find a good omen for the arts at the dentist's, but that's exactly
what happened when an Association of Arts Presenters official we'll
call Jim found himself at a local dentist's after a crown fell off,
on the opening registration day Friday of the 44th annual Association
of Arts Presenters meeting in New York City. Jim explained to the
doctor the mission of the organization he works for, the leading
trade organization for arts presenters, which is convening in town
through Tuesday at the Hilton Hotel and vicinity for meetings, panels,
and, most important, showcases by companies who want the presenters
to book them. The dentist, who had never before treated Jim, mentioned
that he played in a jazz group. After the dental work was completed,
the dentist told Jim, "You're in the arts. No charge."

Jim related this story
to me and a dance company director/choreographer at the end of a
very long, but fulfilling opening day of the Arts Presenters conference
which was full with many surprises, most of them delightful. As
it's now, er, 1:30 in the a.m. as I write this, and I'm exhausted
if exhilarated, more punchy than pusillanimous, I'm going to just
rattle these discoveries off, with the only through-line being that,
like ballet, which never fails to surprise me, in a good way, just
when I think I'm over it, this conference, which frankly appeared
rather dry on paper, was in person yesterday chock-full of news
and insights.

First and foremost, I
think, was the significant presence, for the first time I can remember
anyway, of American Ballet Theatre at the conference. For all the
credit Michael Kaiser got, and deservedly so, for rescuing the company
financially during the mid-nineties, its personnel infrastructure
was pretty moribund. If the dancers carried themselves with a pride
that recognized ABT's place in the American ballet hierarchy, much
of the rest of the staff did not. Well, in the last year or so,
since Louis G. Spisto took over as executive director, the house
has been cleaned. Greg Patterson, a veteran of the National Ballet
of Canada, Orange County Performing Arts Center, and Los Angeles
Opera, has been installed as the company's new director of marketing
and Communications. Where the previous regime cared only about the
New York Times and, on occasion, the former Dance Magazine (and
only when it was promised a cover, or so it seemed), Patterson has
reached out, already, to everybody in the media.

In another positive omen,
Jon H. Teeuwissen, a veteran of dance infrastructure if ever there
was one who has held leadership roles with the New Orleans Ballet
Association and Pilobolus, among others, has been named general
manager of ABT, Donya Hubby company manager, and Cristina Ares manager
of the Studio company, which seems to be thriving these days, with
fresh choreographers like Julia Adam and fresh dancers like Misty
Copeland. (Who, Ares told me, only started dancing when she was
14 -- yes, 14.) The main company isn't doing too bad either; it
will soon increase touring to forty weeks, Teeuwissen told me. A
new, re-vamped web site will be launched in about six weeks. The
company finally has e-mail, which it did not as recently as a year
ago. Premieres by Paul Taylor, Mark Morris, and David Parsons are
coming up, as well as the company premiere of John Cranko's "Eugene
Onegin."

While we're on the topic
of resurgent ballet companies, I am very, very pleased to report
the launch of the Joffrey Ensemble Dancers, as a performance unit
of the Manhattan-based Joffrey School. In other words, this company
which was so essential to the renaissance of ballet from the 1960s
on, and to the cultural firmament of this city until it decamped
for Chicago in 1995, will once again have a presence in New York
-- vital to this city, as well as to the students, who will now
have the opportunity to perform. They give an informal recital this
week. Later this year, they'll perform with a symphony orchestra
in New Jersey.

The Ensemble is represented
by World Arts, Inc., lead by Vincent Paul, assisted by Meg Gurin
Paul, herself a well-known former Joffrey dancer, who is the new
company's ballet mistress. The artistic director, working with school
director Edith D'Addario -- yes, some things never change -- is
Elie Lazar.

While we're stopping
at the World Arts table, Mr. and Ms. First-nighter, Ms. Paul also
told me that Nacho Duato's Compania Nacional de Danza, a rage the
last time it was in New York six or so years ago, returns this summer,
opening at the New York State Theater July 25 with an evening-length
work set to Bach, and called, er, "Deep Bach." Duato himself will
dance in the piece, opening and closing it. World Arts also represents
Complexions, which gives a showcase Monday at 3 p.m., in City Center
Studio 5.

And while we're on the
subject of ballet, it's time to play good news-bad news. The good
news is that, according to Marc Baylin, his client Suzanne Farrell
will remount her company next fall. The bad news -- my opinion --
is that, from what I can gather from Baylin, it's still basically
a pick-up company -- my words. As before, the audition and rehearsal
process will start around next summer, with the dancers coming from
the ranks of those who already have full-time jobs. I'm a Farrell
fan. Let's not mince words: If Balanchine's last muse, who really
does seem to channel him, were sitting where Peter Martins is sitting
right now, the New York City Ballet wouldn't be dancing like a ship
without a captain. However, in her company's last season, seen around
these parts at the New Victory Theater, the last-minute coming together
and pick-up nature of Farrell's ensemble showed. The dancers didn't
gel as a unit; the quality of the group dipped to such an extent
that while Farrell, being Farrell, could still lift them to a level
surpassing themselves, it still wasn't the level that could present
the work she so prizes -- by Balanchine and Robbins, especially
-- at the standard it deserves. Put simply: To really give us the
company, with the presentation of ballets, that she is capable of,
Farrell needs to make it a real company, with a full contract, attracting
top-level dancers to a full-time commitment.

Now then, let's move
on to modern dance!

Here we also have good
news and bad news.

The good news is that,
from what I saw yesterday, artists are pushing themselves.

Shapiro and Smith, a
company known for its uncanny ability to combine schtick and dance,
is going, in its latest work "The Last Night Before Fall," for pure
dance. This dance for two men and three women (or maybe it's three
men -- sorry, it was a long day yesterday, and the S&S showcase
was my first event!), set to Rachmaninoff, is racey -- lots of racing
around. And there's a vertical drift to it - from the upward projection
of the bodies, arrested only briefly in fleeting lifts, to the final
tableau, where all step forward and, elbows akimbo, raise their
arms to Heaven. Creatively, I think this pure dance dance is a brave
move which S&S needed to make.

In her piece "The Carmen
Suites," inspired by the Bizet opera, Rebecca Stenn and her PerksDanceMusicTheatre
have reached a level few companies have, in at least two ways. Typically,
non-Flamenco companies that work with this music and this theme
essay a sort of generalized idea of what they think is gypsy passion.
For dance, especially, the resulting products are usually insultingly
two-dimensional.

Rebecca (she's a friend),
working with three dancers including herself and two acting musicians
(in ways that go beyond the usual cloying interaction of having
the dancer still or steal the violinist's bow, or the musician circle
the dancer), has created a precise, tight work with many layers
-- comic, dramatic, subtle and over-the-top, all in one dance that
can't be more than 15 minutes in length, but encompasses a world
of relations. It's as if Stenn took the various relationships in
"Carmen," threw them into a hat, and then blindly picked out new
matches, so that the same characters of the original emerge, but
in unexpected match-ups. David Eggar plays his cello while resting
on his back on Peter Kope, who is also on his back. Jay Weissman
plays his bass guitar while resting on his back, as a black flamenco-dressed
Michelle de la Reza straddles him. The whole piece starts with two
of the dancers, Kope and de la Reza, owning the instruments, while
the natural musicians, Eggar and Weissman, strike poses both ominous
and enticing.

The other main way in
which this piece blew me away -- we're not even going to get into
Stenn's inventive choreography for dancers and musicians, as that's
a given by now with this company which takes its name seriously
-- is its delicately respectful use of the cultural form of Flamenco.
If there's one thing I can't stand, it's American choreographers
who appropriate -- not just are "inspired by," but appropriate --
other cultures' music, exploiting its ready exoticism without really
understanding the culture from which the music comes, or even the
history of the music itself. As a sometimes DJ, I won't even play
Flamenco, because I think it's disrespectful to use it out of its
context, i.e. apart from real Flamenco dancers.

I don't know if I quite
have the facility to capture the delicacy to which I refer in Stenn's
use of this music and dance tradition, but I'll try. First, she
is neither pretending that she and her dancers are Flamenco dancers,
nor is she ironically vogueing and posing against the Flamenco style.
There is some stamping (stomping?), yes, but it is used sparingly,
and at select moments. That the three women are wearing Doc Martin-like
Skechers is like a visual acknowledgement that they were not trained
in Spain; at the same time, their stamping is not over the top,
so that they're obviously not mocking the real thing. Rather, the
spare stomping ends up being seen and felt as a tribute, by master
dancers in one form (modern) to master dancers of another. And remember,
it is not used throughout.

In fact, tho, Stenn's
overall choreographic way of expressing herself -- her language
-- in this dance startlingly, tellingly, and accurately reflects
the Flamenco way of speaking. In Flamenco, particularly Flamenco
ballets, sometimes each step can seem like a word, a small series
of steps like a specific sentence. While Flamenco feet are impassioned,
they are anything but wild -- this is a very deliberate, emphatic,
precise, and yes even nuanced language. While the stamping in Stenn's
piece isn't constant, as in Flamenco, every measure of choreography
is saying something; there's nothing extraneous.

Stenn's company is a
little over five years old; prior to its regular establishment,
she danced for six years with Momix, where she was a muse to Moses
Pendleton, the Momix founder and Pilobolus co-founder. For the last
-- yow! -- four years, Stenn has been one-half of the Pilobolus
veteran duet company, Pilobolus Too. Pilobolus, and subsequently
Momix (and their many progenitors, including Iso, Body/Vox, Peter
Pucci, and others) was ghettoized almost from the get by the traditional
modern dance community, both because most of its founders were not
traditionally schooled dancers, and because the dances they then
made did not rely on a prescribed modern vocabulary. While both
these companies have more or less proved these nay-sayers irrelevant
by producing movement moving experiences equal to those of the traditionals,
they still also produce enough silliness to, in some people's minds,
justify their being ostracized as just so much flim-flam. But what
Stenn has done is expand (contract?) this Pilobolan-Momixian form
to the point where every single "trick" or "gimmick" or prop promotes
and instigates and ignites a pure dance.

Stenn, tutored by her
agent (hint, we're introducing a leitmotif now for the rest of this
article) Jodi Kaplan, has always given a helluva lean Arts Presenters
showcase machine, and yesterday's was no exception. The program
also included her standard solo tour de lizard "Iguana," which,
over the years, has become nicely nuanced. And "Embrace," co-choreographed
by Stenn with Kope and de la Reza, who dance on a turning disk,
has assumed new texture. In the past, this romantic duet was often
a bit too schmaltzy for jaded me -- tho perhaps just in the context
of the cavalcade of sophisticated and multi-layered wit that is
much of a Perks program -- but this year it's taken on a hint of
tragedy, no doubt because the music has changed, to Messiaen, an
excerpt from his Holocaust paean "Quartet for the End of Time."
Towards the end of the piece, as they slowly spin and Kope lifts
de la Reza, the arch of her knees and the pointing of her feet portray
a beauty tinged with just a tad of poignant sorrow; And a newer
piece, obviously still finding its way, called "Fast Dance," a frenetic
duet for the two women which, while well-danced and with hints at
a theme (the two move laterally, on a grid almost, and often against
what seems a gale force), needs to go more in that direction, i.e.
finding an over-riding theme to give the kinetic impact the narrative
oomph that the rest of Stenn's dances have these days.

The other way her showcase
is lean -- and folks, I'm not just running on on the Perks because
Rebecca's a friend, but because there are lessons to be learned
here by others -- is the efficient way the company breaks it down
re: telling the presenter audience its recent and upcoming gigs.
Instructive here -- and here we introduce yet another sub-theme
to this Arts Presenters rave -- is the company's ongoing experience
with the Kohler (sp.?) Arts Center in Sheybogen (sp.?), Wisconsin.
"Residency" -- I saw that flinch -- has long, for some, and understandably,
been a dirty word in this industry. A pill companies have to swallow
to get commissioning money. But there's a new way of thinking afoot,
by some companies, which is to see these arrangements as an artistic
challenge. The Perks went to Wisconsin late last year, thinking
that "community work" meant members of the community would audition
for the new piece, and it would have to pick some of them. Well,
actually, it meant that anyone from the community who wanted to
join the party could! The Perks has embraced this idea. And here
comes the fun part: They got to walk through the Kohler factory
-- er, Kohler is the one that makes all your bathroom appliances,
basically -- and take anything that wasn't attached. Result: a percussion
instrument, of sorts, made up of 186 or so brass faucets.

Speaking of flow, and
flights of fantasy, and more surprises, yesterday I attended a special
interest panel, hosted by Sophie Renaud of the Association Francaise
d'Action Artistique, on "French Cultural Exchange," thinking it
would contain lessons on how to better promote, er, cultural exchange
between France and the U.S. Instead -- and much more usefully, in
terms of real information -- it provided a lesson affirming what
many of us already know: This is a tough nut to crack, from both
sides!

AFAA's mostly government-funded
mission -- it gets 80 percent of its budget, or about 142 million
French Francs, or about $20 million, from public monies -- is to
facilitate French companies coming to this country. This they do
by, for instance, paying the travel costs of French artists, and
also for travel costs of presenters who want to come for France
to research the French scene. (One solution Renaud suggested for
increasing the presence of French dance here: Presenters need to
take longer trips to France. At which point I was tempted to insert:
Did I say I was media? No, no, no, I'm from Dance Insider Productions
in Greenwich Village!)

One of the first questions
out of the chute came from Linda Shelton, the savvy executive director
of the Joyce Theater. Noting that when she'd been in France several
years ago, she'd "got a lecture about how we weren't doing our part
to bring French artists to this country" Shelton asked if the situation
had improved. Renaud answered, essentially, that now there are not
so many American companies in France, and not so many French companies
in America. And that for the latter it usually comes down to Ballets
Preljocaj, Maguy Marin, Opera de Lyon, and one other company.

Renaud, who used to manage
Karine Saporta (sp.?), pointed out, "We toured all over the world,
but just one time in the U.S. It's a question of (arranging) meetings
between presenters and artists, but also getting presenters who
have the opportunity to bring French dance to spend more time in
France. (Likewise), French presenters have to spend more time here."

There's not a French
equivalent to the Arts Presenters conference, Renaud said in response
to a question. How, it was then asked, do the presenters program?
The answer here was kind of vague: They see things; they talk to
each other a lot.

What was left unsaid,
tho maybe hinted at, during this exchange was that, as in New York
City (as some local choreographers complain), there is a sort of
presenting Mafia in France (as some French dancers and choreographers
complain). Look at a festival line-up, and you'll notice that certain
select companies, and only those companies, run the festival loop.
An exception is in the area of dance from Africa, and here Renaud's
organization has made it a special sub-mission to recruit, and fund,
the presentation of dance from that continent, particularly at the
Montpellier Festival, which Renaud praised as the largest in France,
just about, and one of the largest in the world. If I understood
her correctly, there's also the possibility of funds to support
touring of these African companies in the U.S.

I'd be remiss as the
representative of a publication geared towards dancers if I didn't
tell you that her organization is also funding, in part, a special
master class at Montpellier this summer, for which 40 top dancers
from around the world will be selected to study with choreographers
appearing in the season. Like French programming, and indeed AFAA's
own funding process, just who gets in will be highly selective.

I did get a hint, later
on, outside of the room of this workshop, about how American choreographers
might crack the French festival nut. (I should explain: The rap
on American dance from French programmers and some dancers is that
it's stuck in post-modern, which is why they don't program it, except
for celebrity post-moderns like Trisha Brown and moderns like Merce.
As David Parker has aptly pointed out
in these pages, this reduction ignores whole third, fourth, and
fifth streams of dance that have been developing for the last thirty
years in the U.S., in the dance-theater hybrid form, for instance.)
I ran into a choreographer whose company is up for being programmed
at a French festival this summer, and she said her company's entry
was through the local museum community, which is just happy to get
some good, glamorous dance, and doesn't need to play Mr. In and
Mr. Out.

If France and the U.S.
are at a cultural Mexican stand-off, so to speak, I am pleased to
report that the U.K. seems to be doing at least one thing better:
Yesterday I scored big-time when I found myself at the table for
the London-based Arts Publishing International LTD, which table
was stacked with copies of "PAYE," the Performing Arts Yearbook
for Europe, and "MOD," its sister publication for Asia, the Pacific
and North America. We're talking lists of companies, presenters,
festivals, agents, funders, and more - and lists with really useful
information.

Let's take a couple of
examples. Looking up Pilobolus Dance Theatre, we see not just the
usual data, for example that the company has six dancers, but that
they're on a 40-week contract, and that the company has an income
of $1.3 million. Above that, in the entry for Momix, we find the
"dance type" described as "surrealistic, magical, illusionary, humorous,
vaudevillian, non-categorizable."

Under Agents, the description
for Elsie Management gives us not only the contacts, but actually
tells us that Laura Colby's agency specializes in contemporary dance
management and providing representation services, and that its clients
include soloists, smaller modern dance companies, and eight member
dance companies, all of whom are available for touring.

Folks, this is far more
information than any other directory I've seen offered. For more
info, you can e-mail peter.lynch@api.co.uk.
Tell 'im the Dance Insider sent you. Er, I do have a caveat: The
information in this directory seems to rely on the listees for its
veracity. If Stephen Petronio's dancers have a 52-week contract,
then I'm one of the dancers. And if the Joyce Theater seats 800
(in reality it's about 300 less), as the entry for Petronio implies,
then I'm one of those who perform on its stage. ;)

Speaking of, er, issues
of representation: Enough people have brought this up to me now
-- often, er, egged on by me -- that I think I can introduce the
topic without breaching any one confidence. And frankly there's
too much at stake for our art to sweep this one under the table.
There's a choreographer out there who, in the opinion of me and
many others, is, at the least, the next Paul Taylor. He has talent
to spare. What this choreographer needs now, most of all, is REPRESENTATION,
i.e. an agent. And a manager wouldn't be bad either. Those of you
who know him probably know who I'm talking about. In addition to
being gifted, this young man is also nice. He just needs us to shake
him by the shoulders and tell him, again and again: Get an agent,
get an agent, get an agent.

And speaking of Pilobolus,
and again of representation, in yesterday's e-mail I ranted about
how the University Musical Society spoiled our efforts to cover
last night's performance of a new work by that company, which UMS
had co-commissioned. Well, yesterday I cornered one of Pilobolus's
representatives at the IMG booth, the erstwhile Julia Glawe, and
this young woman is so on top of it (that's a compliment!) that
she was able to tell me immediately that the company will reprise
the Klezmer piece next month at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach.
We'll try to be there! Because, er, we know we don't report enough
on Pilobolus as it is! ;) ;)

And, er, speaking of
West Palm Beach, the hottest rumor floating around the floor yesterday
at the Arts Presenters opening reception was that Kathryn Harris
(sp?.) -- you know, THAT woman who selected George Bush as president
-- will be tapped as the President-Select's NEA chairman. Folks,
not even Momix would dare to make up a dance with that premise!
Welcome to the (Dis?) Illusionary Odyssey!